.. Imagery

Mother Jones

Throughout Philadelphia, you can see signs like the one above, marking places and people who left their mark in the city.

Mary Harris "Mother" Jones was a prominent Irish-American labor and community organizer and public speaker in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In 1902, she was called "the most dangerous woman in America" for organizing mine workers and their families against mine owners. She organized a "Children's Crusade" to ensure that child labor laws were enforced. At around age 60, she took on the "Mother Jones" persona and never stopped fighting until her death at age 93 in 1930. A true anarchist.

Mother Jones never associated herself with the women's suffrage movement, stating "You don't need the vote to raise hell!" Looking back, and looking at the state of things today, maybe she was right. "Raising Hell" seems to work better than voting.

Here is another quote from her: "I asked a man in prison once how he happened to be there and he said he had stolen a pair of shoes. I told him if he had stolen a railroad he would be a United States Senator."